Commentary by Guest Commentator

Kalevi Rantanen reports from the TRIZ Developers Summit 2010 ------------------

* A non-governmental organization, the TRIZ Developers Summit conducted the conference in Saint Petersburg, July 26-27, 2010.
* Approximately 90 experts from 12 countries participated in the summit.
* First day topics included "TRIZ-based Forecasting Methods."
* Second day topics included six thesis presentations and discussions for a TRIZ Master's Degree; four were accepted.

More information can be found on the website: http://triz-summit.ru/ru. The following includes my personal experiences and feelings.

The forecasting topic was particularly interesting. The audience wants answers to three questions:

1. What will happen?
2. When it will happen?
3. How much will happen?

Last year I wrote several articles about energy technology. People want to know which technologies will be used to generate energy, particularly electrical energy. For example, will nuclear energy be an important part of energy mix or will it fade away? They also want to know when the changes in technology will happen. For example, when will solar power get economically viable in the large scale production of energy? They also want to get quantitative foresight. Most experts agree that we will have more solar power in 2050, but how much? Will concentrating solar power provide ten percent of the global electricity in 2050, as the International Energy Agency's expert group forecasted last spring? Or will it provide more or less?

To answer the first question of what will happen, involves using TRIZ tools. To answer the two other questions it involves conventional forecasts such as using scenarios from the International Energy Agency.

The summit provided a wealth of inspiring material, mainly for finding better answers to the questions of qualitative changes. Here are some highlights:

Simon Litvin talked about a new tool called parallel evolutionary lines and its applications to forecasting. Engineering systems pass through similar evolutionary stages. That's why the evolution of less developed systems can be predicted using the knowledge of advanced systems.

Litvin gave one example, the problem with sealing for leak prevention in oil transportation. A nearly ready solution was found from the submarine industry.

On the question of reliability of forecasts Litvin answered that the solutions are obtained adapting proven technologies from other industries such as parallel evolutionary lines for highly reliable results.

Reliability can be studied by analyzing the successes and failures of earlier forecasts. Boris Axelrod´s paper "Experience of Effective Technical Forecasting" in conference proceedings contains a rare and informative retrospective analysis of a forecast made 15 years ago. Axelrod wrote that the history of TRIZ-based forecasts, "Is still too short to give us a number of real examples that would make it possible to look back and analyze their results." One of the existing examples is a forecast of the evolution of a toothbrush.

Axelrod talked about errors in the project as well as its success as a whole. He stressed: "A lot could be said about successes here, but errors (are of) much higher importance for a researcher."

For example, he identified timing errors. Using technology developments for modifying toothpaste at the precise moment of teeth cleaning was anticipated in about 20 years. Later, however, it was found that work in this direction was already going on. The market potential of some minor improvements at stage two of the system evolution was underestimated. From the other side, some developments of "smart toothbrushes" were overestimated.

Axelrod's work may be the beginning of more rigorous statistical evaluation results. So far the evidence of the efficiency of TRIZ has contained mainly case studies. The history of forecasting by TRIZ has been too short.

Besides statistics of successes and failures we need better repeatability of results too.

Gaetano Cascini and his team have worked to increase repeatability of technology assessments. He talked about the correlations between contradiction evaluation and the law of increased ideality. The paper contains an example of how to assess tablet production technologies in the pharmaceutical industry.

The important problem of repeatability was also considered by Aleksey Pinyayev. He said that his tools have shown good repeatability. He talked about algorithms for defining an application condition and a why-why analysis. They are advanced functional analysis tools.

Functional Analysis Is Progressing
A pleasant surprise in the summit was the progress of functional analysis.

Of the four thesis projects accepted three were directly devoted to functional analysis. The fourth was on the use of phase transitions (also with connections to the functional analysis topic). It contains tools for the transition from the functional analysis results to the appropriate solution standards.

All were of high quality, particularly one. Oleg N. Feygenson presented strong work for, "Improving the Methodology of Function Analysis for Engineering Systems." Feygenson has connected the concepts of space (place of function performance), time (time of function performance) and harmful effects mapping (functional disadvantages) into an advanced function approach. He also implemented the new approach to industrial projects.

The Spirit of the Summit
The summit was friendly and offered an informal atmosphere, connecting strongly critical approaches to work with high respect to the people creating the work. It was pleasant to see the best traditions of TRIZ continue.

In the 1970s Kalevi Rantanen worked in Finnish youth organizations, mainly on problems of education. From 1979-1985 he studied in the former USSR, earned his M.Sc in mechanical engineering and discovered TRIZ. He worked in Finnish industry from 1985-1991 and at the same time conducted TRIZ training. Since 1991 he has been an independent entrepreneur. He has also conducted TRIZ training from 1991-2001. Since 2002 he has concentrated on science and technology journalism. Contact Kalevi Rantanen at kalevi.rantanen (at) kolumbus.fi.

Herbert Roberts is reporting from the 33rd annual PDMA conference.---------

The Tuesday November 3rd session of the 33rd annual PDMA conference at Anaheim's Disneyland Hotel, featured keynote speaker venture capitalist, author, and former Apple Macintosh developer Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki's presentation featured a collection of product development and innovation based wisdom he gained through out his diverse career tracks. Following the format of his book Rules for Revolutionaries, Kawasaki presented ten key points, plus a bonus point, that practitioners should focus on while developing and introducing new innovations.

As an Apple employee in the early Macintosh era, Kawasaki, discussed how the Apple Macintosh development team philosophy aligned with the TRIZ principle of the-other-way-around when marketing the Mac. Accepting the fact the business platform they had envisioned, was never going to successful compete against the IBM based, they realized that the Mac was unexpectedly successful in markets they had never envisioned. Following Kawasaki noted as Let 100 flowers blossom philosophy, Apple learned that they could not successfully define their computing system to fit into the business market, but by listening to the unexpected computing graphics market comment as to why they love the Mac, the marketing team was eventually able to reposition the Mac to maximize this unexpected market.

During the follow-up Q&A session, Kawasaki was asked what the US should the do to help regain and maintain an innovation edge as a leader in technology. Kawasaki suggested that the US should open its university doors to the entire world inviting all the brightest to attend the US universities and let them learn and grow their ideas in the US. Even if a significant number of these students choose to return to their native counties the seeds for innovation would be planted in the US based business and industries and in the global partners that US business can benefit from through an inverses global brain drain.

One of the most interesting products demonstrated at the PDMA conference was the capabilities of a set an intelligent devices know as Siftables, developed by David Marrill of MIT (http://siftables.com/). The innovative cookie-sized computers can take on a range of text, numbers or images and by shuffling the squares around the text can form words, or the numbers and math symbols can solve equations taking advantage of their motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication.. At a later session, David Marrill was able to demonstrate the Siftables for Guy Kawasaki while Kawasaki recorded the demonstration for his technology blog.

Guy Kawasaki has a discussion with David Marrill as David demonstrates his Intelligent Devices know as Siftables.

----------------------------------------------------

Herbert Roberts is a principal engineer at GE Energy. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt and helped lead GE Energy efforts on expanding the use of TRIZ in support of internal growth within GE's businesses. He has trained and led a range of TRIZ-based research projects and workouts in the U.S., Germany, India and China. Prior to joining GE, Herbert worked at United Technology's gas turbine division for 11 years with a focus on developing advanced technology military products.

This report was provided by The TRIZ Journal's popular author Darrell Mann, who organized the UK TRIZ Forum # 1, hosted in Clevendon. Here's Darrell's report:

-----------------------------------------------

The UK is generating a lot of TRIZ content but it rarely gets presented in the UK. That was the starting premise for the May 14 session where we started to put the situation right. Forum#1 then was the first UK TRIZ practitioner and researcher TRIZ event. In true TRIZ-community fashion, three weeks before the event a grand total of three people had registered. Hence we decided to run a low-key mini-meeting at SI HQ in Clevedon. No sooner had this announcement been made, the whole world and his dog decided they wanted to come along. A pity since the office couldn't cope with more than 20 people. Nevertheless, despite the frustrations of turning people away, the day was deemed to be a success by the lucky 20 who secured their place in time. In all, twelve papers were presented:

1. John Cooke: How To Have Your TRIZ Cake And Eat It Too (More Impact From TRIZ For Less Effort)
2. Paul Filmore: The Effect Of Myers-Briggs Type On Engineering Innovation
3. Shuo-Kai Tsai: The BRIGHT Hypothesis, A Method For Introducing TRIZ
4. Conall O'Cathain: Pushing The Boundary Of Architectural Education With TRIZ
5. Darrell Mann: Unheard Voice Of The Customer: Understanding Populations Better Than Populations Understand Themselves
6. Olga Bogatyreva: A Tool For Solving Problems That Are Unknown Yet - How TRIZ Helps Astronauts In Their Missions To Mars And Moon
7. Adrian Cole: Unravelling And Resolving Hybrid Electric Vehicle Design Conflicts
8. John Cooke: Two Ways To Solve The Same Problem – A Comparison Of TRIZ Tools In Action
9. Darrell Mann: Updating TRIZ - 2006-2008 Patent Research Findings
10. Elies Dekoninck and Thomas Howard: Comparing the effectiveness of TRIZ stimuli with three other creative stimuli tools in company brainstorming sessions
11. Mir Abubakr Shahdad: From Computer-Aided Invention to Computer-Aided Innovation
12. Julian Vincent: TRIZ Is The Key To Biomimetics

The papers were followed by a panel discussion, (Self-)Organising the Future of UK TRIZ.

One of the best aspects of having a small audience was that the level of participation was high. Every paper received a slew of downstream questions and, for the most part, all egos were checked at the door on the way in to the room, answers were genuinely listened to and minds were open to receiving alternative views of the TRIZ world.

The short discussion session at the end of the day concluded that there was interest in running a follow-up event later on in the year. (More details of that event as soon as dates have been identified.) In the meantime, anyone who wasn't able to make it to this event, we are hoping to make a CD containing the presentations and a clutch of supplementary materials submitted by attendees who couldn't be accommodated into the formal programme. Interested parties should send an email to s.k.tsai@systematic-innovation.com.

-----------------------------------------------------

Darrell Mann is an engineer by background, having spent 15 years working at Rolls-Royce in various long-term R&D related positions, and ultimately becoming responsible for the company's long-term future engine strategy. He left the company in 1996 to help set up a high technology company before entering a program of systematic innovation and creativity research at the University of Bath. He first started using TRIZ in 1992, and by the time he left Rolls-Royce had generated over a dozen patents and patent applications. In 1998 he started teaching TRIZ and related methods to both technical and business audiences, and to date has given courses to more than 3,000 delegates across a broad spectrum of industries and disciplines. He continues to actively use, teach and research systematic innovation techniques and is author of the best selling book series Hands-On Systematic Innovation. Contact Darrell Mann at darrell.mann (at) systematic-innovation.com or visit http://www.systematic-innovation.com.

Herbert Roberts is reporting from the inaugural TRIZ Practitioners Exchange.---------

The second day of the TRIZ Practitioners Exchange (TPE) continued with open discussions surrounding two additional areas of interest selected from the pre-meeting topics of interest listings were selected for discussions: 1) non-technical applications of TRIZ and 2) integrating TRIZ within a company's existing culture and initiatives. The TPE concluded with a review of the lessons learned over the two sessions.

The non-technical application of TRIZ was a leading point of interest for all of the practitioners. The TPE followed the World Cafe approach provided the necessary infrastructure to keep the discussions on time and kept the user exchanges inclusive in nature. The non-technical discussions were productive enough to expand into two of the allotted discussion time segments. Leading points in this discussion indicated that business managers relate better to business-based solutions than technical achievements.

Within the TRIZ community, non-technical approached to TRIZ are often viewed with skepticism by some TRIZ masters. The view is that non-technical solutions lack the statistical validation than more traditional technical solutions. Some researchers and authors have approached investigating non-technical solutions, and in some cases, some have defined non-technical parameters and expanded solutions to include other forms of modeling to capture non-technical based contradictions and system weaknesses. Several practitioners shared first-hand experiences using TRIZ to address non-technical solutions during the double session, which provided insight into what defines a successful non-technical approach, the process outcomes and the management teams perspective of the processes results.

The discussions about integrating TRIZ in to existing business cultures and initiatives were also supported with discussions of the first-hand experiences of the participating practitioners. Leading the take-aways was the recognition that developing hybrid solutions was common and useful to help build a bridge between the "us and them" separation that TRIZ can develop as a "competing" tools to other more tradition forms of idea capturing and creativity generation tools. A wider discussion focused on the shared perspective of management's "real" level of interest surrounding TRIZ.

The last session of the day focused on recapping the leading points of each of the topics discussed during the exchange. The attendees agreed that the event was useful and supported a level of knowledge exchange that was useful beyond more traditional one-on-one discussions. The information presented and discussed was viewed as compatible to the wider exposure to TRIZ gained at wider open-invitational conferences which can provide a unique perspective on TRIZ's application in the commercial and educational markets. The TPE session ended with plans for at least one more future event and the goal of increasing the participation level to include more active practitioners from other realms of businesses and TRIZ backgrounds.

Herbert Roberts is reporting from the inaugural TRIZ Practitioners Exchange.---------

The inaugural TRIZ Practitioners Exchange (TPE) kicked off at noon on Thursday, January 29th, in Tempe, Arizona and continues on through Friday January 30th. Larry Ball and David Troness of Honeywell International, Inc hosted the event, which focused on the unique needs of industry practitioners. Billed as "not another conference," the event's agenda is based on the suggested topics of the attendees, as collected through the TRIZ Practitioners Exchange Google group site.

The twelve attendees represent five organizations that have developed unique solutions using TRIZ as a learned skill based on causal analysis and problem solving. Identifying themselves as TRIZ practitioners, the exchange kicked off with a vision statement directed at getting "a few questions answered" through an exchange of practitioner based workplace experiences and lessons learned. Following the attendee introductions, the exchange focused on a selected subset of the eight suggested topics on Thursday, with an additional subset of the topics schedule to be covered during the Friday session.

The Thursday session focused on exchanging the practitioners' insights on:

• The lessons learned in deploying TRIZ in organizations,
• The experiences related to teaching and training TRIZ skills and
• Defining useful TRIZ-related metrics for benchmarking and comparative analysis.

Key finding during the exchange identified that deploying TRIZ in organizations has two main approaches in top-down deployment (push) and grassroots-based viral awareness (pull). The practitioners identified that the pull strategy has worked best in educating those employees that will make the best use of their TRIZ education over the long run. It was noted that while having high-level leadership support was useful, the support was not a solid basis for sustainability in the long run.

The practice of teaching TRIZ- and systematic innovation-based skills was best exchanged through a mentorship-based education tied to real work related projects and best learned by students willing to fail and take risks to apply TRIZ skills, even if the initial efforts were poorly executed or misdirected. The practitioners observed that obtaining level 1- and 2-based training skills has not correlated well with student confidence in their TRIZ-related skills or their long-term application of the skills past the initial training exercises.

TRIZ-related metrics were observed to be hard to tie solely to a product or process improvement. TRIZ is seen best as an enabler, ROI analysis is not a good standard to measure the impact of TRIZ skills in an organization. TRIZ-related metrics are best when they fit into the existing structure of an organization's reporting system. Better metrics in the acceptance of TRIZ within an organization are based in leveraging the support of key problem solvers within the organization, and their choice to apply TRIZ skills to solve problems.

A follow up report will cover the practitioner exchange discussions held during the Friday sessions.

----------------------------------------------------

Herbert Roberts is a principle engineer at GE Energy. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt and helped lead GE Energy efforts on expanding the use of TRIZ in support of internal growth within GE's businesses. He has trained and led a range of TRIZ-based research projects and workouts in the U.S., Germany, India and China. Prior to joining GE, Herbert worked at United Technology's gas turbine division for 11 years with a focus on developing advanced technology military products.

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.---------

I have arrived to my second Japan TRIZ conference near Kyoto. The official title is ‘The 4th TRIZ Symposium in Japan'. After a 12 hour flight, three trains; I have finally arrived. And ‘arrive' is the operative word, because to arrive in Japan is like few other countries. Immediately one is aware of ‘contradictions'. A land very flat with sudden dramatic mountains, beautiful forests and dense industry, frantic activity and inner peace, modern architecture and ancient temples, to name but a few i.e., a TRIZ practitioners paradise!

Out my bedroom window I see Lake Biwa; a lake as big as a sea. In the foreground are long sticks appearing from the water in regular patterns. What is the ‘function of these I wonder?

My Japanese friends here tell me these are to guide fish to a small area where nets can be placed. This system works by the knowledge that when fish find their way blocked they tend to always swim towards deeper water. As one can see from the photos the sticks are often further apart than a fish's dimensions, but work I assume because when the fish starts to swim from a blockage, they keep going in one direction. This approach seems to be symbolic of a key area of TRIZ, that of really understanding the underlying functionality (or physical principle) in any process. Please get back to me if I have missed something here! I was also wondering if the heights of the sticks allow transmission of vibrations from the wind to produce an acoustic fence underwater, enhancing the fish channelling effect?

The day started with an exquisite breakfast (with hardly any food I recognised). A warm greeting waited at registration for the pre session delegates. The choice (?) was to learn about TRIZ in Japanese or for a detailed discussion of sharing individual TRIZ experience. The second option proved to be interesting not least in catching up with colleagues' developments from a year ago. It also developed into interesting speculation of where TRIZ is going.

The formal opening was after lunch, by Toshihiro Hayashi, chairperson of the Japan TRIZ Society Board. He presented an interesting analysis of the growth in participants over the last four years to this conference. Although the total number of participants was lower (167) this year (due to a number of reasons), those presenting had increased from 34 to 46. The first Keynote was from Amir Roggel who gave a presentation of Intel, innovation and the TRIZ developments at Intel worldwide. Two significant points stood out. Firstly that Intel has recognised that TRIZ has made Intel ‘many millions', far offsetting ALL the costs associated introducing TRIZ. Secondly that TRIZ is being significantly ramped up with over 1000 employees having gained level 1 (5days), over 200 at level 2 (another 5 days) and ~40 at level 3 (20 days).

After the Keynote, there followed a number of sessions in parallel. All presentations were dual projected in English and Japanese, with translation provided for question sessions. I gave a paper which followed on research from last year's presentation of identifying indicators associated with highly effective engineers and then linking these to TRIZ tools. This year I presented the results of associating Lean and 6Sigma tools with the same indicators. What I found from initial analysis was that Lean, 6Sigma and Lean Six Sigma had ‘less rich toolsets' associated with these indicators. This rather implying that TRIZ has some significant advantages over traditional approaches! One other session of note was from Dr Toru Nakagawa reporting on the latest developments of USIT. This approach is gaining strength in Japan, judging on the number of papers to be presented using this. I rather liked Toru's ‘Six Box' overview of the USIT procedure developed using Data Flow Diagram visualisation (see diagram). I have always felt that the ‘four boxes' representation of ‘general' TRIZ, used often to promote TRIZ, trivialised TRIZ in the minds of new comers.

The evening began with a buffet dinner allowing people to move around and ‘communicate' with each other. This worked very well and gave many opportunities to talk and link up. The evening closed with an optional classical guitar concert from Ireland's premier guitarist, Catherine Thom.

Toru Nakagawa exclaimed, ‘a very beautiful and relaxing recital'.

What a day! I look forward to tomorrow.

Links for further information

• Conference: http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/
• Hotel & Lake Biwa: http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/elinksref/eJapanTRIZ-CB/e4thTRIZSymp2008Pre.html#Venue
• Catherine Thom: www.CatherineThom.com

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.----

The Final Day.

Well it is over and what a conference it has been. Before you all rush over next year, let me caution you that most of the presentations are obviously in Japanese. The organisers have though gone to a huge trouble to provide simultaneously presented PowerPoint's in English with a printed copy of all slides or papers. Questions are also in Japanese with an impressive effort being made by the organisers themselves to translate/ summarise questions.

The day kicked off with Simon Dewulf (MD, CREAX: www.creax.com) giving the second invited paper entitled ‘Variation of properties for new or improved functions.' In a highly visual presentation (with actual product examples), Simon introduced ‘properties' and then variation of properties for new function. What was interesting was his property function matrix (particularly when patent information was added). This led on to introducing his company's DIVA software and its use to aid innovation.

I suppose I should not write about my own paper which followed, but as no one else is easily available, please excuse me if l just mention some key points. The paper on ‘Developing highly effective engineers' was aimed at giving managers some reasons why they should invest in TRIZ. It looked at the very few papers that have been published in this area and so had to resort to broader research on (highly) effective people. Taking key points from these works, psychology and creative problem solving, it tabulated TRIZ tools against potential for ‘breaking mindsets' and tabulated the identified attributes of highly effective people against TRIZ tools. I hope by these initial ideas that over worked engineers and their managers will appreciate that TRIZ is ‘not just another tool' to be learnt like 6Sigma, QFD, Functional Analysis, FTA, FMEA, Taguchi, VA/VE, TQM, Lean, etc.

I like case studies and this conference had them. It was not just general cases from study groups like the Japan VE Association (all participants from industry), but included real research cases e.g., Hitachi and developing hard disk drives. Obviously the ‘patent' part was left out but the TRIZ development steps helped show TRIZ potential. After lots of technical slides, my favourite was the cartoon slide which said ‘Not frequency – its gain.' I.e., TRIZ had broken through the mind sets of the different groups of engineers working on this project. Well done Hitachi and the other company's who showed us real cases. Let us hope others in the west can start doing this instead of hiding behind ‘competitive advantage and non disclosure of everything,' thinking.

Well done again to the conference management team: an excellent job. Any one who can attract about 150 participants from industry out of the 200 participants is going to get TRIZ noticed in their country. Watch out the rest of us!

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.----

Well the second day of this immaculately organised conference has finished. Again, 202 participants keen to hear about TRIZ!

Larry Ball (Honeywell and well known in western TRIZ circles) kicked off the day at 9am with his invited talk on ‘TRIZ Algorithms.' He gave a very clear and practical presentation on causal analysis, which included a case study. After a couple of other good presentations we had eight 3 minute introductions to the poster session. This worked well to maximise participation/ papers and topic breadth. After lunch we circled around the posters in small groups, with each presenter giving parallel introductions to their poster. The inevitable bell keeping the conference working like clockwork!

I gave one of the two parallel session talks for Darrell Mann (www.systematic-innovation.com) who had to unluckily cancel at the last minute. The talk on ‘Systematic Innovation for Business & Management: Experiences 1994 – 2007' went very well (which surprised me as I was not sure of the level of comprehension), with good feedback and questions from a number of delegates. Whew! This then took us up to 6pm for another short break followed by a buffet dinner. Again I was pleasantly surprised as this had been labelled as buffet dinner and communications' and worked very well as the two hours disappeared with so many people stopping to chat and often to recommend some unrecognisable delicacy. I hope I can stick this pace for the last day!

The full programme can be found at: http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/elinksref/eJapanTRIZ-CB/e3rdTRIZSymp2007Pre.html

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.---------

I've arrived here for my first visit to Japan. I am so grateful that it is ‘cold' so that I have time to acclimatise. Fortunately I was given good instructions as to getting to the conference as the number of choices in travelling through Tokyo by train is bewildering e.g., the Tokyo main station is on four levels!

The conference is impressive with 200 delegates this year (150 last year) and most from industry. I find it embarrassing at the level of company interest here compared to my experiences in U.S. (brief) and Europe. The delegates also are of senior level (i.e., deputy or even general manager( from the people I have talked to so far.

The talks on the first day have been good and I must praise the organisers for translating all the slides and dual projecting the PowerPoints. An interesting perspective came from Mr. Hayashi (Hitachi) who was reporting introducing TRIZ across the organisation. Feedback had shown that Taguchi was found by employees to be the easiest to use followed by QFD. TRIZ was reported to be the most difficult to start, but the speculation was that this was due to the fact that there were (until now) no conferences to which people could attend. It was thus thought that people starting now may find learning TRIZ much easier.

Another talk was by Mr. Okuzumi (General Manger, Toshiba Innovation Promotion Division). After giving a company overview, he looked at all the innovation methods and activities used in the company and reported how TRIZ was finding a place. Change was referred to a number of times with obvious senior management backing and the emphasis was on innovation management c.f. management of innovation. Toshiba has an i3 (i cubed) cross functional approach to innovation, comprising of process innovation in sales & marketing, production & procurement, research & development. What was also interesting was the use of words such as how innovation is defined in the company, from ‘a small innovation on the spot' to ‘ the maximum approach that increases wealth creation capabilities by doing things in a completely new way to maximise profits.'

I look forward to the next day.

-------------------------------------------

Dr. Paul Filmore has been teaching creativity, personal, professional, entrepreneurial and research skills for over 10 years, at the University of Plymouth, UK. At present he ‘introduces' TRIZ to over 100 first year engineering degree students and 100 technology Masters (postgraduate) students.

Paul runs an innovation consultancy ‘The Insight Centre' where TRIZ and other systematic problem solving skills predominate and have recently been augmented by research and practical understanding of how disruptive innovation thinking can help to further break mindsets. Paul can be reached by email at pfilmore@plymouth.ac.uk.

RSS